Tips for Choosing Concrete Flooring |
Posted: June 22, 2018 |
Protecting and making concrete floors aesthetically pleasing opens up a wide array of options to choose from. Nevertheless, coating them is an effective way to treat them and there are many coatings available for concrete floors, so how do you determine what is the best option for your particular situation? Conditional FactorsOrdinarily, the first thing to do is to determine the shape that the concrete is in. Is it brand new, freshly poured concrete? Is it older, dirty and greasy concrete. Was there a flooring material on it previously, and if so, is there glue stuck to the concrete? Is there a coating currently on the surface? Is it smooth or porous? Ideally, any concrete floor that has an existing coating on it will be diamond ground to remove the existing coating and give a fresh surface for applying the new coating. In this case, if diamond grinding is out of the question, then the types of coatings available are limited. At the least, all coatings must have a porous surface to adhere to. Call ICS floor coating contractors if you have any questions. Environmental FactorsMoreover, the next thing to determine is the usage of the floor. What kind of traffic will it endure? Will it only endure foot traffic, or will it endure vehicular traffic as well? Is it in a commercial, industrial or residential setting? Accordingly, these are important things to consider to ensure the durability of the chosen coating. Conversely, in commercial and residential settings, aesthetics are more important, so decorative concrete coatings are available to achieve many different colors or designs. Available OptionsFor the sake of brevity, there are typically three types of coatings for concrete floors which include enamel, stain and epoxy. Each type has features that make them beneficial for different reasons. Water-based formulas dry to the touch quicker and take longer to dry, but they are also easier to clean up because they only require soap and water versus an oil-based product’s requirement of solvent cleanup. Whereas enamels get painted onto the surface of the concrete, stains are thinner and soak into the concrete. Stains are also available in either water-based or oil-based formulas and have the same caveats mentioned about the water-based and oil-based enamel. One other note for water-based products, whether stain or enamel, is that they will not typically accept vehicular traffic, but conversely, the oil-based version of each will do fine under light vehicular traffic. Epoxies are also available in water-based or solvent-based formulas, and both formulas hold up well under vehicular traffic, but they tend to yellow under direct sunlight.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|